


your boldness stands alone upon the wreck

by rameneatermeatbeater



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, F/F, Rainbow Drinkers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-08
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-02-28 05:46:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18750235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rameneatermeatbeater/pseuds/rameneatermeatbeater
Summary: Rose Lalonde has a crisis of morality.





	your boldness stands alone upon the wreck

**Author's Note:**

> i've been wanting to write this fic for absolutely ages and i'm so glad that i finally got down to business.  
> thank you for reading and i hope that you enjoy!  
> the title is from 'little lion man' by mumford and sons.

Rose Lalonde sits in a coffee shop, sipping a plain black beverage, and decides who to kill next.

The coffee shop is quiet around her; she’s one of the only people sitting at a table. The others are college students, frantically working to get one assignment or another done. She takes another sip of her coffee and finishes typing out the response to her most recently received email.

TT: Mr. Ampora,  
TT: I believe that we have already established that I’m willing to take nearly any request, provided that the amount of aureiis I will be paid is satisfactory.  
TT: Please forward the newest request to me as soon as possible.  
TT: ~ Rose Lalonde.

She leans back and stretches subtly, biding her time until the email pops up in her inbox. It appears almost immediately. She clicks on the newest addition to her inbox and is immediately accosted with more eights than it’s proper to use in one email.

AG: Heeeeeeeey!  
AG: Your fishface boss told me that I should come to you with my request. I have to warn you, though; this one isn’t going to be easy!!!!!!!!  
AG: I need someone t8ken out for personal reasons. Her name is Kanaya Maryam, and I need her gone quick! And don’t worry; I’ll be able to p8y up :::;)  
AG: I’ve attached a picture of Miss Maryam.  
AG: Th8nks! 

The client is offline by the time Rose gets through the email, leaving Rose with no choice but to accept the commission. She clicks on the picture, and sighs. The quality is absolutely terrible. She doesn’t know why she expected more, honestly; the majority of pictures she’s sent are in bad quality, but this one is especially horrendous. Rose can make out some jade-tinted skin and two long orange objects, which she assumes to be horns, but that’s all. 

She zooms in, suffering through the three pixels that she can see at any given time. It only takes a couple reverse searches to find out the place where the photo was taken; The Skaia Bar. Rose has been there a few times herself, but she prefers to avoid intoxicants due to her bad memories of them. Whoever she’s after must have a passion for vomiting their insides out because that place sells very strong drinks.

Rose lays three dollars and fifty cents on the table where she sat and gets up to throw her drink away, taking one last inhale of the strong scent of coffee beans. A quick check of her phone reveals that it’s five o’clock at night. No sane person is going to go drinking this early in the evening, so she decides to retire to her home for a couple hours.

She hails a taxi and sits in silence for the ride home, barely tolerating the insufferable music the driver has on. She exits a block away from her house and resolves to walk the rest of the way; the last thing she wants on her mind right now is a horribly-sung rendition of Troll Ke$ha.

“I’m home!” she calls, opening the door slightly. There’s no need for her to call for anyone. Her cats don’t care if she lives or dies; all they care about is that she carries the key to a replenishable food source. It’s a fate that she has learned to deal with. 

Her house is small and gloomy. The walls have a tacky flower pattern on them that she simply doesn’t care enough about to change. She decides to have an early dinner of spaghetti, but she accidentally dumps too much pepper into the sauce. After tasting it and determining that it would earn her a culling from Troll Gordon Ramsay, she dumps the rest of the meal into the garbage and sits on the couch, putting on the news.

Rose stays like this for another three hours. Blinking the sleep away from her eyes, she throws on a small purple sweater and leaves the house as soon as the overly-loud clock ticks 8. The bar is a short walk away from her home, and she arrives at 8:30. 

When she enters, she resists the tempting urge to cover her ears with the nearest soft material. The bar is bustling and loud, the complete opposite of the shop she had taken refuge in for the day. Trolls and humans alike chatter the ears off of bartenders, who simply look bored as they pour more drinks for thirsty patrons. She takes a seat on the nearest stool and refuses the bartender’s offer of a drink – she doesn’t need anything that would hinder her ability to catch her victim.

Then she sees her.

Rose takes the newly printed picture out of her pocket and compares it to the troll sitting across the room. They both have horns that look approximately the same size, and the short black hair is consistent with both trolls. Her suspicions are only confirmed when she hears the bartender hand a drink to her, while asking ‘Miss Maryam’ if she would like to close her tab.

The assassin silently stands up, but the troll still seems to hear her. Her fluffy ears perk up, and she glances back, muttering a curse as she sees Rose’s hand sneak into her pockets. “Yes, please close my tab, I promise I’ll be back to pay in just a couple minutes.” Maryam seems frantic. The bartender yells at her to wait, to come back and pay, but she’s already rushed out the door, aware that she’s being followed.

Rose follows her outside the door, speeding up into a run to match the very quick pace that the girl in front of her is leading. Maryam eventually stops in an alleyway just a block away from the bar, turning to face Rose with glimmering yellow eyes. Rose can see her much better from here, when she’s not blocked out by the too-bright lights of Skaia. 

Trolls, in general, are not the prettiest species. Some even border on grotesque. Maryam, however, seems to be the cream of the crop when it comes to attractiveness levels in trolls. She has black hair that stretches to nearly touch her shoulders, and she’s one of the tallest troll’s that Rose has laid eyes on. She wears a grey shirt and a crimson skirt that just about reaches her ankles. Rose’s oculars are instantly drawn to the tattoo that’s inked on her shoulder; the Virgo sign.

“Maryam.” Rose greets, her voice level. “I assume you know why I’m here.” She is nothing if not polite.

Maryam gives an insincere smile in return. Her hand tugs lightly at her skirt, perfectly manicured fingernails adjusting the hem. “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Luckily for you, you’re about to find out.” Rose removes two sharpened knitting needles from the pockets in her sweater. She had them made just for her. They clack together in her hands, the sound of the clicking Tungsten echoing through the quiet alley.

Maryam doesn’t seem fazed by Rose’s demeanor. “And I’m sure you’re about to find out why you don’t just attempt to kill innocent people in the middle of bars,” she retorts. 

The battle begins.

Rose sprints towards Maryam, but the troll is quicker than the human expects. She whips to the side, avoiding the slash of needles, and Rose is not happy to find out that her assumption that Maryam was unarmed is incorrect. A polished chainsaw emerges from somewhere in her sylladex, and spindly fingers pull on the chain to rev it up. It’s time for Rose to change her strategy. If that chainsaw hits a limb, Rose has a small chance of survival, but that’s assuming that she doesn’t collapse and bleed out in a shady alleyway. If it hits anywhere near her torso, she’s definitely dead. The consensus is that Rose cannot afford to have that thing touch any part of her body, especially anything above the legs. 

The split second that Maryam takes to start up the chainsaw is all Rose needs to lunge towards her, burying the knitting needles through the skirt and into her thigh. The taller girl bares her teeth and pulls the needles out like they’re twigs, snapping them in half with ease. Dark green blood flows in rivulets from the two marks. Maryam seems more irritated that her skirt is ripped. “I feel that you might be lacking some information if you believe that your pesky needles are going to have an effect,” Maryam says. 

Rose watches with something akin to amazement as the skin begins to sew itself back together, stemming the flow of blood and restoring the troll to her full health. The information clicks in Rose’s head, and it seems so obvious. The jade-green blood. The odd, almost overgrown height of the troll in front of her. The way she laughed as if Rose was nothing more than an ant she could squish under her heels. Maryam is a rainbow drinker.

“I’ve never met a rainbow drinker before,” Rose banters. She keeps extra needles for this specific reason. “I’ll almost be sad to see you go.” She makes another step to the side, baiting the chainsaw, before she goes in again for Maryam’s neck. The needles don’t even make it an inch into the skin before Maryam realizes what’s going on and jerks back. The chainsaw swishes through the air elegantly, and Rose almost doesn’t get out of the way in time. One of the sleeves of her beloved pink sweater tears off and hangs limply from her forearm, taking a strip of skin with it. 

Rose isn’t as lucky as the troll; she doesn’t have anything to stop the blood flow. This needs to end soon.

Both of them stand just a few yards away from the other. Rose is panting, but Maryam looks as composed as ever. Her ears twitch, and Rose hears the noise just a split second after the troll does; sirens. Police sirens.

Maryam turns tail and flees to the side of a building. She throws herself up onto the wall and scales it easily, not even breaking a sweat. Do trolls even sweat? Rose doesn’t want to stay in the company of one long enough to find out. 

The sound of Maryam’s ringing voice breaks Rose away from her thoughts. “While I would like to say that it was good to meet you, I am afraid that’s not the case. Farewell.” She hesitates. “Or don’t.” Rose blinks and the rainbow drinker is gone, leaving no trace behind besides a single footstep in the mud next to the building. The sirens get louder, and Rose decides that she should get out of there as well. She turns into the next alley and hides behind an old cardboard box until the sirens start to fall in volume.

Rose Lalonde has never been bested before, and this will not be the first time. This was simply their first encounter; Rose still has plenty of time to send a needle down her victim’s throat. With this thought in her mind, she returns back to the street and starts the slow walk home. 

…

Rose sees Kanaya Maryam the next day, and it’s completely accidental. The night before, she had stumbled home, taken a shower, and collapsed in her bed. She’d stayed awake for hours, contemplating what she was going to do about a stubborn rainbow drinker and the way her stubborn heart kept beating, despite her desperately wanting it to stop. The too-many clocks in her house ticked around in her head, reminding her of the tentative time limit her client had set.

She’s killed many people with her knitting needles. The knitting needles that she had snapped into pieces. Rose has never had to try and kill someone more than once, because they always succumbed to the sharp points of her vengeance on the first try.

Early that morning, she walks to the hive of an acquaintance and asks him for a new pair of knitting needles, rubbing the back of her blonde head sheepishly. “How did you manage to break them? They were made with an extremely STRONG metal.”

She doesn’t go into detail, but she says something about an unexpectedly strong girl. She even says ‘strong’ in a louder tone than usual to make him happy. He seems pleased with her answer, and he promises that he’ll have a new pair of needles by seven that night. Rose thanks him, pays him for his troubles, and leaves the hive. On her way out, she swears that she sees a flash of familiar black hair.

Maryam is sitting outside one of the bookstores near Equius’s hive. She’s talking to a boy who looks just a couple years younger than Rose. He looks enraged by something that Maryam is saying, but she just laughs softly when he shouts a string of barely coherent profanities. Half of her wants to charge up there, grab her by the front of the shirt and get it over with right there and then, but the sane part of her knows that without her needles, she’s just a girl with a superiority complex.

Rose is sure that Maryam notices her; her eyes narrow for just a second, and her gaze flashes over to the hive she had just left. Had she been anyone less observant, she wouldn’t have noticed it, but this is what she has trained for. Being observant is a necessary part of her job. They don’t speak or even make direct eye contact; She simply walks past Maryam like the troll hasn’t been buzzing around in her head for hours and hours.

Rose is irrationally angry.

…

The third time they meet is on purpose for one of them and accidental for the other. Rose spends hours upon hours researching ‘Kanaya Maryam’, researching ways to kill rainbow drinkers. It takes a lot of probing throughout the dark web, but she eventually manages to come across her chumhandle (grimAuxiliatrix – how pretentious) and her address. She only needs one of these, though the other could come in handy.

It’s the middle of the night when Rose Lalonde steps up to the door of Kanaya Maryam’s house. She removes a pin from her hair and expertly sticks it into the lock on the door. For someone who was seemingly intelligent, Maryam clearly had no idea how to keep her house properly locked up. The hairpin twists easily through the lock and Rose pulls it out once she hears the telltale click.

Rose fastens the hairpin back in her platinum-blonde locks and slowly opens the door to the house with a soft creak. Her house is big, significantly bigger than Rose’s, and she supposes that it’s just one of the pros of being on the higher half of the caste spectrum. She carefully steps through the house, avoiding the old wood floorboards, her pupils snapping from side to side as she searches for one specific jadeblood. She eventually finds her, fast asleep in a recuperacoon, in a room where designs of clothing and the clothes that were designed are hung neatly up against the door.

Rose removes her new needles from her pockets and raises them up. She only hesitates for a second before she slides them through the slime of the recuperacoon, but it’s a lot thicker than she expected. Her needles are slowed down by the impact of the slime, and she suddenly realizes that there’s no way she can kill her like this. It’s physically impossible.

She’ll just regenerate if she gives Maryam a non-fatal blow, and the slime is slowing down her needles far too much for her to slide them into the troll’s neck with enough force to penetrate the rough skin. 

Rose leaves the house with slime-covered needles and an irritated expression on her face. Clearly, there’s something up in the sky that’s stopping her from killing this stupid rainbow drinker, but she isn’t going to stand for it.

Rose Lalonde is not a quitter.

…

They meet once more in the dark alley where they first fought, chainsaw against needles. Rose doesn’t expect her to be there, and she’s barely able to cover up the shock on her face. She had come to retrieve the shards of the needles that were still left in the musty shadows of the alley, when she had seen a skirt and the bright, silvery flash of a chainsaw.

Surprisingly, the chainsaw wasn’t on. It could still do damage, of course, but Maryam didn’t seem to be in the mood for another fight. Instead, she just walks up to Rose with her skirt swishing on the dirty ground.

“I have a question,” Maryam says. “And I believe you have an incentive to answer it.” She twitches the hand that lightly grips her chainsaw, and Rose knows what she’s saying. Rose wouldn’t have enough time to draw her needles if Maryam suddenly decides to go to town with her chainsaw and whichever of Rose’s body parts that she can reach. Considering their height difference, she knows that these body parts include her head and neck. 

“You’re correct,” Rose says, stiffly, and it pains her to say it.

“Who asked you to kill me?” Maryam asks. Her voice is clear, but Rose can sense that it’s shaking slightly. “I would like to know. I have some suspicions, but I’d like confirmation so my final wish can be to have whoever it was executed publicly by guillotine.”

“Violent,” Rose muses. “Unfortunately, I can’t give you a name. They never shared it with me. All I can tell you is that they used an excessive number of eights in their text. And they typed in blue, so I suspect that they had a blood color close to that hue.” Providing as much information as possible to the girl with the chainsaw seems like her best bet for survival right now, and that’s exactly what she’s going to do.

Maryam hesitates for a second too long. By then, Rose has turned around and sprinted, putting enough distance between herself and the rainbow drinker for her to safely wield her needles. She tosses one up into the air and grabs it again. It’s a prideful display. Rose is a prideful person.

“Thank you for your information,” Maryam says. Her voice rises into a questioning tone at the end, and it’s the obvious opportunity for Rose to provide her name. She doesn’t, and she knows that Maryam doesn’t expect her to. They know each other surprisingly well for two people who are in a hate-hate relationship.

“Thank you for not hacking off one of my limbs. However, I feel like it’s best that we stop with the pleasantries now so we can get onto one of our inevitable deaths.  
”  
Maryam’s mouth quirks at the corner, and Rose feels some kind of odd pleasure at seeing it. Maryam starts up her chainsaw, slicing it forward, and it begins.

This time, they don’t fight. They dance.

They’re still fighting, and they’re both still in mortal danger due to the other’s weapons, but it doesn’t feel as violent this time. Rose dodges all of Maryam’s attacks with elegance and grace, and Maryam somehow seems light as a feather despite wielding a dangerous and heavy chainsaw. Rose pokes her knitting needles through Maryam’s arms, straining her wrists, and Maryam bats them away like they’re simple splinters.

Rose leaps over the arc of Maryam’s chainsaw, which slices at the place where her legs were just a minute ago. Just a second later and she would be missing two legs. The thought makes her shudder, but she doesn’t show it.

It continues like this for what seems like years but is only five minutes. Five minutes that Rose has failed (intentionally?) to kill her victim. Five minutes that Maryam has missed all of her strikes, and Rose lets a small flame flicker in her chest that suggests that she was doing it on purpose. She immediately douses the flame with anger at herself. This is someone who she’s supposed to be killing. She’s getting thousands and thousands of dollars for this kill, but she’s being stupid and she hasn’t managed to hurt the other girl in the slightest.

“Rose,” Rose says, and Maryam blinks. “That’s my name. You implied that you wanted to hear it earlier, so there it is.”

“Rose,” Maryam repeats, and she smiles. It’s a fanged smile and there are too many teeth for it to be particularly pretty, but some primal part of Rose likes it anyway. “You already know my name, I suppose, but it’s Kanaya just in case.”

It doesn’t feel right to keep fighting after that short bonding moment, so Rose tucks away her weapons. Kanaya follows suit, placing her chainsaw back in her sylladex after a moment of hesitance. There’s a distinct air of awkwardness between them, so Rose decides that it’s about time for her to get home. “Farewell,” Rose says, mimicking the tone Kanaya used on their first encounter. 

Kanaya doesn’t respond, and Rose doesn’t look back when she walks away, but she hopes that Kanaya is smiling. 

…

CA: rose the client is gettin impatient here  
CA: you need to have the job done soon  
CA: she says she wwants it done by tomorroww  
CA: don’t disappoint

Rose doesn’t respond to the flurry of messages that Ampora’s sending her, instead choosing to lie in her bed with her head pressed firmly against the pillow. One day. She has one day to kill Kanaya Maryam, and she’s struggling to even keep her eyes open. She has one day to make her way back to that alley and face off against the person that’s been the hardest for her to kill.  
Rose picks up her phone and sends a message to grimAuxiliatrix.

TT: Hello.  
GA: Who Is This  
GA: And How Did You Acquire My Chumhandle  
TT: It’s Rose.  
TT: I will be in the alley later today.  
TT: If you feel like joining me, I’ll be there in approximately one hour.  
TT: Don’t be late.

She stops texting Kanaya and pulls herself together, putting on some clothes that make her look somewhat presentable. She eventually decides on a casual short skirt, along with a dark purple shirt. She slips on a pair of shoes and starts walking to the Skaia Bar. When she arrives in the alley, Kanaya is already there.

They don’t talk for a moment, but Rose breaks the silence. “The client wants you dead by tomorrow,” she admits. Kanaya doesn’t seem surprised by this. She just nods and allows Rose to keep talking. “I’m getting paid a lot for your head on a plate, but I don’t know if I can do it.”

Since her mother died, this is the most personal Rose has gotten with anyone. It’s almost ironic that if all goes well, this new friend of hers will be dead by tomorrow. Rose doesn’t want it all to go well.

Kanaya exhales softly. “Well,” she murmurs. “I hope that what I’m about to do will make the decision easier for you, no matter what you decide to choose.”

It takes three strides of Kanaya’s gazelle-like legs before they’re just inches away from one another. Kanaya leans down slightly, grips Rose by the back of her neck, and brings their lips together in a kiss that’s harsh and lovely. It’s all the feelings that Rose has suppressed for the majority of her life. It’s everything she’s ever wanted, and it’s terrifying. The kiss lasts exactly three seconds, and when Kanaya pulls away, Rose can still feel the rainbow drinker’s searing lips on hers. “I hope you make the right choice,” Kanaya says, and before Rose can respond, she’s gone.  
…  
TT: Ampora.  
CA: rosie for your owwn sake i hope youre bringin me good newws  
TT: That depends on what your definition of ‘good news’ is.  
TT: The news that I’m here to share is that I’m leaving. Tell the client that I can’t do this.  
CA: did you just say wwhat i think you said  
TT: Unless you’ve suddenly been afflicted with blindness, I believe that you read my words correctly. Farewell, Ampora. Or, as a friend of mine would say, don’t fare well.

She blocks him immediately after that and doesn’t bother texting Kanaya. Some instinctual feeling in Rose’s gut tells her that she’ll be waiting there. Rose slips on a jacket and breaks into a run as soon as she leaves her house, sprinting towards the alleyway.

Rose’s gut is right. Kanaya is waiting there, elegantly sitting against the wall. Her yellow eyes brighten when she sees Rose, but they soon return to their normal color. “I didn’t bring my chainsaw,” Kanaya says, immediately. “If you’re going to kill me, now is the time to do it. I have nothing to stop you with.”

“Fortunately, it’s not going to come to that.” Rose says, and Kanaya allows surprise to cross her features for a split second. “I quit my job. I ditched the client. I’m out of a job and I’m out of a hobby, so I hope that you’re going to make this worth it for me and I hope what I'm feeling isn't just an infatuation.”

Kanaya’s smile is radiant. It’s as bright as the sun, no, brighter. Rose smiles genuinely, then, and she nearly collapses into Kanaya’s arms. “This is rather fast for a relationship to go,” Kanaya says snarkily. “I believe that the human tradition is to take me out to dinner first before you decide to make another attempt on my life.”

Rose starts laughing, then, and she has to stretch up to kiss Kanaya once more. This time, it doesn’t have any of the desperation. This time, it’s soft and gentle, like they have all the time that they need to enjoy it.

“I think that I can work with that.”


End file.
